The poem "My Daddy's Waltz" by Theodore Roethke is a work rich in ambiguities, which manifest through the language used in the work as well as in the relationship between the speaker and Readers can detect two sides of this poem: one being a fond memory of the speaker's father, and the other being the memory of a frightening encounter with the speaker's father , Roethke takes the role of the speaker, looking back to his own childhood with his father, however, the poem shows that he is neither one-sidedly loving nor fearful, but a mixture of both, showing "them." Roethke's ambivalent feelings toward his father, Otto Roethke, whose "strength was...a source of both admiration and fear, comfort and restriction" (McKenna)Say No to Plagiarism Get a tailor-made essay on "Why "Shouldn't violent video games be banned"?Get the original essayAt first glance, the reader understands. I feel like the poem will probably be a happy poem about the loving relationship between a father and his son. However, once the poem is read, the reader may question the title, seeing violent language throughout the piece and confusing emotions. The use of the word "Daddy" in the title suggests the affectionate tone of a son who cares very dearly for his father, and readers agree that there is an affectionate tone depicted in the poem, with some mixed emotions. One critic writes that "Roethke's poetic genius lay in his ability to make an event out of his words, to arrange them in such a way as to create in their reading the breadth and energy of a dynamic life." This quality appears most clearly when energy finds its path blocked by obstacles or when its movement and gentleness are contrasted with the perfect calm of death” (Blessing). Roethke wrote this poem as an elegy for his father, who died when Roethke was 14 (McRoberts), and the poem's seemingly mixed emotions are shown here with Roethke trying to bring a happy memory to life, but it is outweighed by death . One critic comments that “it was surely a moment characterized by contradictory emotions for the speaker: love and fear; enthusiasm and concern; a rough tenderness” (McKenna). If the reader chooses to view the work as a love poem addressed to his father about an encounter he had, the poem is full of love and happy memories. The poem is written in a lighter and more affectionate way, the sung rhyme scheme seems to fit perfectly. The way the poem is written is a sort of waltz rhythm that matches the waltz that the father and son are performing. The “catching rhythms of the poem; the playfulness of a rhyme like dizzying and easy” (Fong) gives it a light and playful feeling. Even the way the poem rhymes in an ABAB rhyme scheme suggests a kind of order that could be described in a happy, orderly family. Many readers interpret the poem's first line as negative by stating that "The whiskey on [the father's] breath / could make a little boy dizzy" (Roethke 1-2). Whiskey on the breath is not usually talked about in a way that would suggest happiness, but rather drunkenness and possibly violence. However, a father stopping at the bar after work before heading home was, and still is, very important and whiskey is a popular drink of choice, making the father giddy and able to show his love more freely for his son, being "drunk enough that exuberance and love could seep out" (Fong). A drunken father can also confuse young children, leading to notes of fear and confusion in the poem's lines. The next two lines of the poem containa touch of ambiguity in that, while the boy "clung like death" (Roethke 3) to his father, suggesting that he needs his father's love and support, the next line states: “Such a waltz was not easy” (Roethke 4). This makes the reader wonder if the boy was clinging to his father out of love for his father or out of fear and whether the boy's father coming home in this drunken state was not an easy thing to deal with or to treat for the boy. However, Roethke seemed to be relatively close to his father when he was young and "spent many hours in the greenhouses, following and assisting his father in his work" (McRoberts), making it difficult to assume that the lines contain only the afraid, but that they have a lot of love for his father. In the second stanza of the poem, Roethke writes, “We raged until the pots / Slided off the kitchen shelf” (Roethke 5-6). There is a lot of ambiguity in these two lines and they have been interpreted violently many times. However, as this is an elegy addressed to Roethke's father, the lines do not make sense for them to have a violent tone. This could be seen as the father and son doing a literal waltz around the kitchen, with the father having been drinking, making it a very awkward dance and in turn accidentally causing the pots and pans to fall off their shelves. Roethke chooses to use "the joyful suggestions of the words waltz, waltz, and romped" (Fong) in the play, the word "rompered" in the fifth line, which generally has a playful connotation suggesting a playful struggle, not something that is really violent. Roethke writes "My mother's face / Could not undress" (Roethke 7-8) in the next two lines, suggesting that Roethke's mother is unhappy with the events unfolding before her. The mother in the poem could see her husband coming home drunk, ruining her kitchen, and interrupting her son's bedtime, which would upset any mother. In the next stanza, the speaker states that "The hand on my wrist / was struck on a knuckle" (Roethke 9-10), a surprising thing for a little boy to notice, unless the boy is already confused about to the interaction he had with his father, in which case Roethke, as a young child, would notice this and I think it was worth mentioning because it added to the confusion. The second half of the third stanza shows how small the boy, or speaker, is at the time of the events taking place in the poem. With Otto Roethke's death when Theodore Roethke was only 14, the poem is a flashback to before his father fell ill with cancer (McRoberts), when he was still in fairly good health to drink and “let off steam” with his son. These lines might suggest that it is difficult for the boy to keep up with the waltz as the couple dances around the house as it is written: "With every step, [the boy] missed / [His] right ear scratched a loop” (Roethke 11-12). It would be difficult for a child who barely measures a grown man's belt buckle to follow his strides, and because of this, the boy's ear might scratch his father's belt buckle as they waltz. These lines also indicate that while the romp was fun, it was also painful for the boy, as his ear was scratched, making the act a little scarier. In the first line of the final stanza it is written: “You have beaten time over my head. » (Roethke 13). This line tends to make the reader question the innocence of the poem due to Roethke's choice of the word "beat." Typically, we would describe this action as a strike or a.